The present invention relates to a road or ground cover mat and a system of road or ground cover mats.
Most known road mats are limited to large square or rectangular mats that are designed to be laid directly onto a ground surface prior to being driven over by vehicles and equipment. These mats see such service in areas where it is prohibitively expensive to develop a full-scale roadway and where access is required and time sensitive, as well as in environmentally sensitive areas where development of a full-scale roadway is simply not feasible due to regulations and/or environmental concerns. These known road mats are limited by their ability to provide some form of highly secure mechanical interlocking mechanism to prevent the shifting of the mats while being traversed by heavy equipment. If the mats shift for any reason and become unhinged, substantial damage may occur to the traversing equipment. Further, such shifting requires maintenance of the mats, substantially increasing transportation costs.
Common road mats are mainly large steel and wooden mats that are designed to be laid over the surface to be traversed. Such mats generally use a rudimentary L or J shaped reversing or reciprocating style end joint or coupling end that is easily joined upon placement but provides for very limited and inherently insecure interlocking capability. Such imprecise designs afford numerous difficulties upon removal, this mainly due to the collection of debris in the sloppy or loose mating joints.
Canadian Patent Number 2,348,328 is directed to a road mat designed to be laid on a ground surface in end to end relation and driven over by a motor vehicle. The mats are secured together by interlocking the first coupling of one road mat with the second coupling of another, adjacent road mat. The second coupling is adapted to engage the first coupling such that a retaining lip of the second coupling engages a retaining lip of the first coupling to prevent separation. Because there is a gap between the couplings, the road mat shown and described in this reference suffers from many of the problems suffered by other prior art.
Although some of the prior art road mats provide for a limited interlocking capability, the known road mats have one or more of the following problems: they are restricted in their ability to interlock; they do not provide for an even surface when placed on undulating sub soils; they do not provide for load dispersal and weight transfer between the structures; and they are not designed for ease of installation and removal, i.e., unlocking. A further deficit of prior art road mats is the capability for wildlife traversing the mats to become injured due to the substantial joint gaps required and presented by the known road mats.